


Poison and Venom

by 78bathsheba



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Implied Torture, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Abuse, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:36:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/78bathsheba/pseuds/78bathsheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If she is poison, he'll gladly drink his fill and die of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poison and Venom

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompts in Panem Day 1 of the "Visual Prompts" cycle.
> 
> :::::
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Suzanne Collins' characters. If anything, they own ME at this point.

The first time he sees her, the morning after the mutts and the Cornucopia—when they were both still foolish enough to believe in victory—her dark skin is ashen and filthy, her body covered in blood and grime. She is wreathed in light and glory as the sun rises behind her. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

It happens to be the first memory the Capitol touches.

The voices hiss and swirl around his brain, and it reminds him a little of the way his head would spin when Mother hit him particularly hard. Except it doesn’t go away, no matter how much he retches, or how long he keeps his head down between his knees.

The voices whisper to him, and later, he realizes her symbol isn’t the mockingjay, it’s nightlock. The girl is poison.

Because how could he possibly love her? She’s small and dark. Plain. Common. A wild little thing that only thrives in the bramble and brush of the unbroken woods beyond the fence. Surely she must have manipulated him into loving her, into being so eager to surrender his life to ensure her survival.

[But he knows better; even in the depths of his madness and despair, he knows the answer: hair dark and glossy, so black it’s almost blue, just like the nightlock. Lips lush and full as the ripe berry, beautifully incongruous on her sharp-planed face. If she is poison, he’ll gladly drink his fill and die of her.]

::::

The first time he sees her after the arrow that ended the war, she is feral and vicious, poisonous in her grief and righteous anger. And he is utterly unsurprised by her next move, reaching for the nightlock pill—it seems like one or the other of them is always filled with poison, or about to be—and with a smooth motion, as if he’d practiced it all his life, he clamps his hand down over her arm, so that her sharp little teeth tear into him rather than her sleeve. She howls, as if she were the one in pain. He just stands there, calm, because it’s just a little pinch, a little bite, not enough to kill him; there’s no poison in it. He’s been through so much worse.

[I can’t, he thinks. Or maybe he says it out loud. It’s hard to tell, The venom is still fresh in him, and he gets confused.]

::::

The first time he sees her back home in Twelve, she is, perhaps, a bit mad: eyes enormous, hair a black billow around her face. He looks up at her from where he’s planting the primrose bush, and his heart hammers, his breath stops; he wonders if he’s this is what it feels like to have eaten that nightlock after all. The sun rises behind her, wreathing her in light and hope. She’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

[The voices whisper to him: the girl is nightlock, the girl is poison, the girl is death. She’ll touch you, and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground. He smiles to himself. If she is poison, he’ll gladly drink his fill and die of her.]

::::

The first time he tastes her, the memory rises unbidden as her juices fill his mouth, and he remembers the berries crossing his lips: warm, sweet, with an iron tang that surprised him. He laps her up, thinking of the cruel trickle of poison down his throat; how it made him dizzy, made his vision swim, although maybe that was the blood rushing from his body. Either way, it wasn’t enough to kill him outright.

Just enough to mark him a dead man.

[He wonders, weary, if there will ever be a time when he can think of her without death casting its shadow over his memories. Because, he realizes, he is tainted too. His venom for her nightlock; perhaps—the thought is a hysterical snigger in his mind—their poisons will cancel each other out.]

::::

The first time he fills her, his memory swings back to that moment again, and in that little death they share, he can’t help but remember the first time they should have died together, in the first Arena, with the world watching. Two children, each clutching a fistful of berries, and the other’s hand.

Now there are no cameras, the world shut away on the other side of their bedroom door. Now he is a man, and she a woman, and the death they seek is warm and dark and sweet, like a ripe nightlock berry.

::::

The first time he sees their child, the voices rise up in a keening wail that almost tears him apart. But he closes his eyes, blocks out everything but the sound of his wife’s voice, murmuring reassurances, and anchors himself to reality. When finally the moment passes, he knows that he has won.

This child is a new life, untainted by deadly berries, or tracker jackers, or the Capitol’s toxins; a symbol of nothing but their love. Just as Katniss is a symbol of nothing. Not the rebellion and their mockingjay. Not the Capitol and their nightlock.

He breathes, and for the first time in a very long time, he doesn’t feel the push and pull of venom and poison.

[He doesn’t think it’s over—not by a long shot, and his aim’s not nearly as good as his wife’s. It is, however, a new day: fresh as a summer strawberry, merry as a buzzing bee. And it feels a little like he’s the one who’s been born.]

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on tumblr. Same user name (78bathsheba) because I'm lazy.


End file.
